The 2026 New Mexico Senate race presents a contrast between two candidates with very different backgrounds, experience and political instincts.
Democratic incumbent Ben Ray Luján has spent most of his career in government. Before entering Congress, he served in New Mexico state government and on the Public Regulation Commission. He then served twelve years in the U.S. House and has represented New Mexico in the Senate since 2021.
Republican challenger Larry “Lead” Marker comes from almost the opposite direction. His background is primarily in small business, oil and gas, construction and agriculture. His campaign emphasizes border enforcement, energy production, agriculture, permitting reform and opposition to federal regulatory overreach. He describes himself explicitly as an “American First Candidate.”
That difference in experience cuts both ways. Marker brings direct private-sector exposure to regulation and small-business economics that is relatively uncommon in Congress. Luján, however, has vastly more experience with the actual work of legislating, budgeting, regulating and operating within the constitutional structure of the federal government.
Experience — and the Burden of a Thin Record
Candidates with substantial governing experience inevitably accumulate votes and decisions that can be criticized. Candidates without such a record can enjoy an unintended advantage simply by remaining vague.
Under CIVPAC’s approach, that should not become a blank-slate advantage.
The less a candidate’s background demonstrates preparation for the breadth of the office being sought, the more important it becomes for that candidate to explain his positions clearly and demonstrate that he has thought seriously about the questions he will confront in office.
Marker’s practical experience is substantial. He worked as a drilling-rig floor hand and later owned and operated low-volume oil and gas wells. He has also been involved in construction, manufacturing, farming and ranching. His own résumé describes that experience in detail, and New Mexico regulatory proceedings independently identify him as an operator of low-volume or “stripper” wells.
But the United States Senate requires familiarity with subjects far removed from those activities: constitutional government, foreign affairs, national security, entitlement programs, federal budgeting, trade, monetary policy, treaties and complex legislative bargaining.
Marker has not held public office, and his public platform remains unusually thin on many of those subjects. That does not establish that he lacks the necessary knowledge. It does mean that his campaign has provided relatively little evidence from which voters can determine that he possesses it.
Luján’s record is much easier to evaluate precisely because he has spent nearly two decades making public decisions.
Constitutional Government and Election Integrity
One of the more difficult questions involving Marker concerns elections.
We have not found a direct statement from Marker saying that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected, or that the January 6 attack on the Capitol was justified. Those positions should therefore not be attributed to him without evidence.
There is, however, a troubling record of election-related litigation.
In 2022, Marker asked a federal court to prevent New Mexico from using what he called its “uncertified and inequitable voting system” to tabulate the November general election. The requested relief was denied and the case was dismissed.
In 2024, Marker brought another federal action seeking judicial review of the authority of members of the New Mexico House elected in 2022 to occupy their offices and exercise legislative power.
Those actions go considerably beyond ordinary disagreement over voter identification, mail ballots or election administration.
Luján, by contrast, has repeatedly argued for constitutional limits on executive war-making authority. In 2026 he voted to require congressional authorization for military action involving Venezuela and Iran and stated that the constitutional power to authorize war belongs to Congress.
These votes establish his position on congressional war powers, although they provide less evidence of political independence than comparable votes against a president of his own party would provide.
Foreign Policy and “America First”
Luján has an established Senate record on American alliances, Ukraine and congressional war powers. He joined a bipartisan 2026 Senate resolution reaffirming Ukraine’s sovereignty and supporting strong U.S. and transatlantic security guarantees. His approach generally falls within the postwar internationalist tradition described in CIVPAC’s foreign-policy and national-defense framework: maintaining alliances and supporting international security while insisting that Congress exercise its constitutional responsibilities.
Marker’s campaign is much more detailed on domestic policy than foreign affairs.
His choice to identify himself as an “America First” candidate therefore creates an important unanswered question. The phrase has both contemporary political meaning and substantial historical baggage. A candidate choosing that label can reasonably be expected to explain what it means for NATO, Ukraine, Russia, China and Taiwan, Israel, Iran and America’s broader alliance system.
Marker has not yet done so in any comprehensive way.
That does not establish that he is an isolationist. But under a framework that does not give inexperienced candidates the benefit of unresolved ambiguity, his lack of specificity is itself relevant information.
A Campaign Centered on the Border
Marker’s most fully developed federal issue is border enforcement.
His campaign calls for aggressive border surveillance and interdiction, greater support for Border Patrol and law enforcement, opposition to sanctuary policies and the use of Senate confirmation authority to pressure federal officials to enforce immigration law. His detailed border proposal calls for “100% border surveillance and interdiction” and says he would block nominees who do not publicly support his preferred enforcement policies.
He has also publicly praised elements of President Trump’s immigration and deportation policies.
What Marker has not explained nearly as clearly is what happens after the border is secured.
His campaign has not developed a detailed position on legal immigration levels, the status of otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for many years, or whether he favors deportation on the scale associated with the current administration.
It would therefore be inaccurate either to characterize him as favoring indiscriminate mass deportation or to assume that he supports a more moderate legalization policy.
Luján emphasizes DACA, farm workers, asylum protections and comprehensive immigration reform. His approach is considerably more focused on legal status and humanitarian concerns than Marker’s, and considerably less focused on enforcement.
Neither candidate therefore corresponds exactly to CIVPAC’s immigration approach, which combines effective border enforcement with workable legal immigration and a realistic path to legal status for many long-term undocumented residents.
Health Care — A Significant Unanswered Question
Health care is particularly important in New Mexico, where Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage play unusually large roles. Recent data show more than 800,000 New Mexicans enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, including roughly a quarter-million in the Medicaid expansion population, while about 80,000 selected ACA Marketplace plans for 2026.
Luján’s position is well established. He supports the ACA, Medicaid and a substantial federal role in expanding health coverage. In 2026 he backed efforts to protect ACA Marketplace coverage and continued advocating expanded Medicaid services.
Marker’s position is much harder to identify.
His campaign currently offers detailed material on the border, energy and agriculture but no comparably developed proposal explaining what he would do with Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, ACA subsidies or protections for people with preexisting conditions. His campaign’s principal issues page does not present health care as a major policy area.
For a Senate candidate in a state where federal health programs are particularly important, that is a consequential omission. It also leaves unanswered how Marker’s approach would compare with CIVPAC’s health-care framework, which seeks broad coverage while placing explicit limits on open-ended federal financial commitments.
Energy and Economic Policy
Marker has a background in a sector of the energy industry that gives him direct familiarity with the economics and regulation of marginal oil-well production.
His experience is hands-on rather than academic or corporate: he worked in the oil fields and later became a small oil-and-gas operator. That experience is most relevant to understanding the impact of regulation at the small-business level. That kind of experience can be useful to legislators at both the state and federal levels.
His campaign advocates what it calls an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, but the technologies it specifically promotes are oil, natural gas, hydrogen and nuclear power. Wind, solar and geothermal energy are conspicuously absent from the list, although their omission does not establish that Marker opposes them. His campaign material also provides little indication of whether he regards climate change as a significant energy-policy issue.
His broader philosophy emphasizes private investment, permitting reform and reducing federal regulatory barriers.
Luján is more comfortable with federal subsidies, regulation and government-directed clean-energy development. He has also supported carbon capture and federal action addressing abandoned oil and gas wells.
Neither candidate precisely represents CIVPAC’s technology-neutral climate approach, under which government prices the environmental externality created by carbon emissions and then allows markets to determine the resulting mix of oil, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, carbon capture and other technologies.
Reproductive Rights
Luján strongly supports abortion rights, contraception and medication abortion.
Marker is clearly more restrictive, but his precise position should not be overstated.
His litigation and political activity demonstrate opposition to New Mexico’s unusually broad reproductive-rights regime. The available evidence does not establish that he favors a federal prohibition without exceptions for rape, incest, serious threats to the mother’s health or severe fetal abnormality.
Moreover, abortion policy is currently largely being determined at the state level, and Marker has not made a federal abortion initiative a centerpiece of his Senate campaign.
The candidates nevertheless occupy substantially different positions on reproductive freedom. CIVPAC’s published abortion policy supports broad legal access during early pregnancy while allowing later restrictions with specified exceptions.
The Divided-Government Consideration
A final issue is institutional rather than ideological.
The presidency is currently held by Republican Donald Trump. Under CIVPAC’s stated approach, divided government can have independent value because Congress serves as an important check on executive power.
That factor should be considered separately from the underlying comparison of the candidates.
Without it, the New Mexico race presents a conventional choice between an experienced Democratic incumbent whose economic and immigration policies are generally to CIVPAC’s left and a Republican challenger whose business and energy background offers genuine strengths but whose preparation and positions on many major federal questions remain insufficiently developed.
The divided-government consideration changes the institutional context because electing another senator from the president’s party and electing a senator from the opposition party have different consequences for congressional checking power.
That consideration does not erase either candidate’s strengths or weaknesses. It is an additional institutional factor layered onto them.
Questions Marker Still Needs to Answer
Several questions would materially improve the ability of voters to evaluate Marker before November:
First, does he accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, and how does he assess January 6?
Second, what does his “America First” identification mean for Ukraine, NATO, Russia, China and Taiwan, Israel and Iran?
Third, what would he do with Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act?
Fourth, does his immigration policy extend beyond enforcement to legal immigration and the status of long-term undocumented residents?
Fifth, what federal abortion restrictions, if any, would he support, and what exceptions would he require?
Marker’s lack of a lengthy political record need not count against him by itself. But neither should it allow him to avoid scrutiny that an incumbent inevitably receives.
A candidate seeking a seat in the United States Senate should provide voters enough information to judge not merely what he opposes, but how he would exercise the unusually broad powers of the office.
Conclusion
Based on candidate comparison alone, and using the available evidence, we would give only a mildly enthusiastic endorsement to Senator Luján. With enough specificity Marker could flip that endorsement in his direction. But at this point we have only the limited information he has offered us.
Taking into account the value of divided government as a means of providing a check on the executive, the endorsement of Senator Luján becomes much more enthusiastic. With a left-wing Democrat in the White House, and more specificity from Marker, that endorsement could also have gone the other way.
The facts being what they are, CIVPAC endorses Ben Ray Luján for the U.S. Senate from New Mexico.